Sometimes, marketing advice gets a little wild, and that’s what makes this episode a must-listen. Jay Schwedelson is on a mission to shake you out of boring subject lines with A/B tests that are completely opposite. Think “you don’t need this email” vs. “you absolutely need this email,” or “letting your inner guilt trip loose.” You’ll pick up plenty of unexpected ideas (and maybe rethink what “we need to talk” really means), plus get a peek into Jay’s annual guys trip and his quest for the world’s most embarrassing gag gifts.
Best Moments:
(01:32) Reverse psychology wins with “you don’t need this email” pulling a 17 percent higher open rate
(02:20) Humanity trumps robots when “a human with three cups of coffee wrote this” beats out AI
(03:34) “Boom. Offer inside” vs. “Psst. Over here”—and the quiet approach steals the show
(04:15) “We need to talk” outperforms “you left us no choice” by 19 percent
(05:02) Passive-aggressive guilt pays off when “still ignoring us?” gets a 21 percent lift
(06:01) “Not mad. Just disappointed” nails the parent-text vibe with a 12 percent higher open rate
(06:32) “Fine. I’ll open it” (the inner monologue test) crushes with a 26 percent boost
(08:45) Jay’s pool party humiliation story and the legend of the “I pee in pools” shirt
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Transcript
Jay Schwedelson: We are back for do this, not that podcast presented by Marigold. And today I wanted to rip through completely ridiculous AB tests that you could be doing in the subject line stuff that you probably have never tried. And in my organization, in my agency, we're always testing different tactics because so often marketers are focused on what's inside the email.
Jay Schwedelson: What's the email say? Did it get approved? Are the images nice? Who cares? And if we don't get the email open, then what is the difference? What's inside the email? So what can you be doing in the subject line that will allow your emails to stand out and not everybody else's? So these are a series of tests that we've been running recently that I call opposite tests.
Jay Schwedelson: And basically we take a concept and we run an AB test and we run, make sure the subject lines are the exact. Opposite of each other to see which one's gonna work. And we got some really cool results here for each one of these. I know this is a horrible episode 'cause you're outside walking, you're driving, you're doing, you can't capture all this information, but maybe you'll go back to it or maybe you'll just ignore this and tell me I'm a doofus.
Jay Schwedelson: It's okay. Alright, so lemme go through these different tests and what worked and what didn't work. So this is kind of cool. The first one, and these are all AB subject line tests. You take your email database, you chop it in half, you do a subject line, a subject line B. You keep everything else the same.
Jay Schwedelson: The first one is the reverse psychology test. So one subject line says you don't need this email. The other subject line says you absolutely need this email. That's it. That's all the subject lines say. Which one do you think did better? Believe it or not, the one that says you don't need, this email had a 17% higher average open rate on the test that we ran.
Jay Schwedelson: People get turned on when they are told you actually don't need something or don't check this out. So that was a cool one. We ran this ab test in this reverse psychology, and that's what I mean by opposites. All of these are running the exact opposite, uh, of each other. Okay, the next one is. AI versus human.
Jay Schwedelson: So one subject line was AI wrote this subject line. The other A, the other B version of this test was. A human with three cups of coffee wrote this. So what do you think would do better in this battle, this AI versus human battle in the subject line? Would it be AI wrote this subject line and that's it.
Jay Schwedelson: That's the whole subject line. Or a human who with three cups of coffee wrote this, believe it or not. The uh, one that said AI wrote this subject line, did not do well, had a 14% lower average open rate. This idea of humanity and inserting that into our testing is working really, really well. And we saw that over and over again.
Jay Schwedelson: We reran that test a bunch of times. I. These are so, these are so all over the place. I know, but this is the type of stuff where you little things can add up and it's just about testing stuff and you wanna have little fun tests. You could be trying all the time. Alright, this other subject line test was kind of wild.
Jay Schwedelson: It's called the sound effect test. Alright? And this is where you put the noise of a sound into your subject line. So one subject line said, and this is where we ran the same subject line across a bunch of clients. One subject line said, boom. Period offer inside. The other one said P, you know, the P-S-S-S-T, it said P dot over here.
Jay Schwedelson: Two very different sounds. One more of like, wow, boom. The other one more of kind of like a low key. So I know how silly this sounds, but what do you think did better the boom offer inside or over here? Believe it or not, the uh, had a 22% higher average open rate across all the different tests that we ran.
Jay Schwedelson: Again, if you think about how ridiculous this is, just by doing that, you can see a radical different, uh, engagement. Now, the next one we did was the vague threat test. So the subject line, all it said was, we need to talk. Versus the B version said, you left us no choice. This is what we ran across all these different brands, business and consumer.
Jay Schwedelson: And what we found, which we thought was kind of interesting, we need to talk, had a 19% higher average open rate. I would open that. I. Now you may say this is gimmicky, this is cheesy, whatever. But it's this idea of when you're doing your AB test and your subject line, what are you really testing? You wanna go in the opposite direction.
Jay Schwedelson: You need subject line tests. And this is for any testing, in any marketing that is different enough. If your subject line tests are too, uh, uh, similar, or any marketing test is too similar, you are not gonna get a relevant result that you could do anything with. Alright, so another one. These are all so wild.
Jay Schwedelson: Another one that we ran was the passive aggressive guilt trip test, and the subject line A was still ignoring us question mark. And then subject line B was, we noticed you didn't open last time. I. And again, this is kind of that passive aggressive thing, and this works on me all the time. It works on me all the time.
Jay Schwedelson: Guilt sells, still ignoring us. Question mark. Actually at a 21% higher average open rate in these tests. And these are great, especially for win-back campaigns. These work so well. Um, this next one, which we, we call this internally the parent text energy test. This is so funny. So one subject line version said, call me when you see this.
Jay Schwedelson: 'cause that's like what a parent would text their kid. Another subject line said, not mad, period. Just disappointed. Come on. You have to love that. And this is more of those win back strategies. And the one that said, not mad, just disappointed actually at a 12% average higher open rate. I love that one. That test was so funny to me when we put it out the door.
Jay Schwedelson: I'm like, I can't wait to see what happens. Call me when you see this versus not mad, just disappointed. Love it. Alright, the last one was this idea of the inner monologue test. This was so crazy. So the first subject line said, uh, not another promo email. The second B version said, fine, period. I'll open it where it's basically what you're actually saying in your head, this inner monologue, that's why we call it the inner monologue test.
Jay Schwedelson: And the one that said, fine, I'll open it, crushed it, had a 26% higher average open rate. So again, I know that these tests, this is all over the place and borderline ridiculous. But when you're thinking about your marketing and you're doing AB tests, first of all, you should always be doing AB tests, but make your tests different.
Jay Schwedelson: Enough so that way you can get a winner and try to be a little creative, be a little bit different. The only way you're gonna break through this tidal wave of generic garbage that's out there in AI land is to be a human. Be a human. Alright, let's get into the ridiculous portion of this podcast, which is called, since you didn't Ask.
Jay Schwedelson: Oh, I'm in it right now. So every year. I go on a guys trip with my six buddies from college, my best friends from school. We go every year and my guys trip is coming up in a few weeks and the way that we do it is every year on the guys trip we've been going, you know, we've been friends for a zillion years.
Jay Schwedelson: On the guys trip, we, we pick out of a hat, we pick out one name and whoever's name gets picked outta the hat. That person is in charge of running the guy trip. They pick the location, the restaurants, whatever we're doing and all that stuff every year. So my buddy. Uh, picked Vegas, which I could do without.
Jay Schwedelson: I don't really like going to Vegas. No offense to people from Vegas. It's just too much for me. I'm a very boring dude. But anyway. On the guys trip, uh, what we do is, I don't know why we do this, but we do this, we all bring gag gifts for each other and we have to like, wear the stuff that we bring each other and they're completely out of control.
Jay Schwedelson: Ridiculous. And the whole time we're together, we have to be using the gag gifts that we, that we bring each other. And it just, it, I mean, we lose it every time. So I'm right now trying to pull together. These ridiculous things that I'm going to have my buddies wear or whatever. I'm gonna give you some examples of last year, which was kind of funny.
Jay Schwedelson: So, um, one of my buddies, uh, got me a shirt. I. Where were we last year? We were in Arizona. I don't remember where we were. And, uh, we were at this very cool pool. It was like a big pool party, whatever. And he got me a swim shirt because I like wearing swim shirts because my wife's a dermatologist. And the swim shirt, he had it made, uh, said I pee in pools and I had to wear this swim shirt the entire time that we were at the pool party, which was just unbelievable.
Jay Schwedelson: I don't, I mean. Just imagine me walking around with somebody as those I pee in pools. It was great. Um, another one of my buddies got my other buddy, a shirt that he had to wear all day, which was just a giant picture of his ex-girlfriend from college, which was so random because nobody except for us knew who that was.
Jay Schwedelson: And it was just un it was fantastic. I lost it the whole time. And then another one was, um, uh, I had to wear a hat. A shirt that said the Carly Ray JSON fan club member. She's the one that says, call me maybe. And everywhere I walked around, I had a shirt and a hat that said, Carly Ray Json fan club member.
Jay Schwedelson: No offense to her. I mean, but I'm not in her fan club and it's super weird. So anyway, right now I'm in the process of figuring out what stupidity I'm going to bring for everybody to wear and whatever. And this is what's going on in my life right now. Um, so yeah. And if, by the way, if you don't do a trip with your old friends from college or high school or some other part of your life, I, I recommend doing it once a year.
Jay Schwedelson: It's very hard to pull together. It's very annoying to find one weekend. It's literally impossible. We all live all around the country and we can, we argue all the time about this trip, but every year we do it. And I hate, I hate it. And yet after it's over, I love it. So I encourage it. And um, yeah, thanks for checking out the show.
Jay Schwedelson: I'll see you later.